Associate Director of Product Classification

YipitData is the leading market research and analytics firm for the disruptive economy and most recently raised $475M from The Carlyle Group at a valuation of over $1B. Every day, our proprietary technology analyzes billions of alternative data points to uncover actionable insights across sectors like software, AI, cloud, e-commerce, ridesharing, and payments.

Our data and research teams transform raw data into strategic intelligence, delivering accurate, timely, and deeply contextualized analysis that our customers—ranging from the world’s top investment funds to Fortune 500 companies—depend on to drive high-stakes decisions. From sourcing and licensing novel datasets to rigorous analysis and expert narrative framing, our teams ensure clients get not just data, but clarity and confidence.

We operate globally with offices in the US, APAC, and India. Our award-winning, people-centric culture—recognized by Inc. as a Best Workplace for three consecutive years—emphasizes transparency, ownership, and continuous mastery.

YipitData isn’t a place for coasting—it’s a launchpad for ambitious, impact-driven professionals.

From day one, you’ll take the lead on meaningful work, accelerate your growth, and gain exposure that shapes careers.

Why Top Talent Chooses YipitData:

• Ownership That Matters: You’ll lead high-impact projects with real business outcomes
• Rapid Growth: We compress years of learning into months
• Merit Over Titles: Trust and responsibility are earned through execution, not tenure
• Velocity with Purpose: We move fast, support each other, and aim high—always with purpose and intention

If your ambition is matched by your work ethic—and you're hungry for a place where growth, impact, and ownership are the norm—YipitData might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

YipitData’s Corporate team collaborates directly with organizations like Ulta, 3M, and Scotts Miracle-Gro to build one of the most comprehensive views into how consumers in the U.S. are purchasing and engaging with brands. By transforming massive volumes of consumer data into accurate, reliable, and actionable insights, we enable our clients to understand not just what is happening in their businesses, but why—and to use that understanding to make higher-confidence decisions in an increasingly competitive landscape. 

As part of our continued growth, we are expanding the Data team within our Corporate practice and are excited to welcome a Director of Product Classification to help deliver the most accurate category insights to our Retail and Brands clients. 

As an Associate Director, Product Classification, you will be the operational leader of our Product Classification organization — the team responsible for ensuring every product in our datasets is accurately categorized to meet the precise needs of our clients. You'll own the people, processes, and accountability frameworks that drive classification accuracy at scale, while maintaining excellent cross-functional partnerships with Engineering, Data, and our client-facing teams.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who thrives in ambiguity & rapid growth. You will be hands-on in building and managing a multi-layered team — including a Data Classification and a Manual Data Quality team — and you'll be responsible for recruiting, training, and creating a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement. You'll set the metrics that hold people accountable, build the systems that make the team scalable, and ensure our classification quality is best-in-class.

• Own operational leadership and accountability for the Product Classification organization
• Build and own the metrics framework that holds every team member accountable for classification accuracy, throughput, and quality.
• Establish clear performance standards, SLAs, and escalation paths across the Data Classification and Data Quality teams.
• Run a rigorous operating cadence — standups, reviews, retrospectives — that surfaces issues early and drives continuous improvement.
• Recruit, train, and develop a high-performing classification team
• Hire and onboard Data Classification Analysts who are obsessed with accurate outcomes and hungry to deeply learn what clients need in each category.
• Build and scale your team, ensuring they can execute consistently on well-defined processes.
• Create onboarding programs, training curricula, and knowledge bases that accelerate ramp time and reduce institutional knowledge risk.
• Ensure analysts own the LLM prompt for each category, continuously refining prompts based on error patterns and client feedback.
• Oversee the creation of scalable analytic checks that detect patterns of potential errors that neither the LLM nor manual checking can catch.
• Ensure the team builds and maintains rules based on deep category expertise — key products, franchises, brands, and how they should be categorized.
• Build and maintain a culture of operational excellence
• Foster a team culture where accuracy is non-negotiable, curiosity is rewarded, and everyone takes ownership of outcomes.
• Create an environment where Data Classification analysts are empowered to go deep — learning the nuances of client needs, franchise structures, brand hierarchies, and how products should be categorized.
• Champion knowledge sharing across the team so that expertise scales beyond individual contributors.
• Maintain excellent cross-functional relationships with Engineering, Insights, and Data to drive our mapping capabilities further. Partner with the Product Manager on system architecture and roadmap
• Work closely with the PM (who owns the classification system architecture and vision) to ensure operational feasibility and team readiness for new initiatives.
• Provide ground-level feedback on what's working, what's breaking, and where the biggest accuracy gaps exist to inform the PM's roadmap.
• Ensure seamless handoff between the PM's process design and the team's execution.
• Leverage AI to accelerate and improve our classification systems to be faster and more accurate
• Partner with Engineering and the PM to continuously improve LLM-driven classification, using the team's domain expertise to train and evaluate models.
• Identify opportunities where AI/automation can replace or augment manual work and lead the operational transition.
• Stay current on advancements in NLP, LLMs, and classification technology to inform team strategy.

• You have 8+ years of experience in data analytics, data operations, category mapping, or consulting, with at least 4+ years leading teams of 10+, and at least 2 years of experience managing team leaders. 
• You have 2+ years of experience working with SQL, Python, PySpark, or other programming languages to explore and transform large, complex datasets; Familiarity with GitHub and Databricks
• You have an operational excellence mindset — you build systems, metrics, and processes that scale. You hold people accountable without micromanaging.
• You have a proven track record of hiring great talent, building training programs, and developing leaders within your team. 
• You are comfortable with ambiguity and building from scratch — this is a team-building role. You'll be creating structure, not inheriting it.
• You can clearly communicate complex concepts, both orally and in writing
• You have a strong ownership mentality and are enthusiastic about making a big impact at a rapidly growing company
• Preferred: Data and classification domain experience (preferred) — experience with product taxonomies, categorization systems, e-commerce data, or similar domains is a strong plus.